Travel Carry for a Week in Malaysia

I set off from London on Saturday for a business trip to Malaysia, which is very exciting. Naturally this required forethought as to what my stationery carry would be for the trip so I thought I’d do a quick update post (from the plane!) on what I’ve brought with me.

Starting off with the bulkier items, I’m bringing my Kiruna leather envelope pencilcase which I bought from CW Pencil Enterprise. It’s slightly less wide than my yellow Hightide pen roll and I thought I would go for something that looks fairly smart in case I have it out on the table during meetings this week. It’s a very good size for a travel carry because it pretty much allows for carrying one of everything (although no new pencils because it’s not wide enough). I love the brightness of this pencilcase and it has a very smooth, solid feel to it making it good for my bag too.

Then I have my iPad mini which I’ve affectionately decorated with my Erasable Podcast decals that I picked up in Boston earlier in the year. Fun no? I love the bright green!

Notebook wise I have two sizes with me. I have a Moleskine large ruled softcover notebook. This was a gift and would normally be a little large for my everyday rotation but luckily makes a great work notebook. Large (usually A4 sized) is what I go for at work and this is slightly shorter than A4. The colour shade is “underwater blue” which I think is very apt and a gorgeous bright teal. Paper-wise I mostly use ballpoints, pencils and gel pens with this notebook as fountain pens can be hit and miss; at work I’m usually jotting things down anyway so this works fine for me. Secondly I have three Field Notes pocket notebooks (a Snowblind, Tournament of Books edition and a blue Sweet Tooth). The Snowblind contains blog-specific thoughts and scribblings, the blue Sweet Tooth contains other jottings such as to-do lists, and the Tournament of Books contains slightly longer narratives which I will finish soon. All wrapped up in my green leather fauxdori.

Onto writing implements. I think I’ve covered most bases!

Two broken record tools: the Uni Jetstream 0.38mm and the Viking Element 1 pencil. I know I bang on about these. It’s not hyperbole when I say I genuinely can’t go anywhere without them. If you want to read about my thoughts on the Viking Element 1 you can find them here.

Fountain pen wise, I’ve gone for a mix of high-end and entry level. The Karas Kustoms Fountain K M nib is inked up with Iroshizuku Momiji which is such a pretty shade of red. Momiji means Autumn Leaves in Japanese which is a perfect name for the colour. It verges more on the pink spectrum than orange. Then I’ve got my Pilot Kakuno F nib with Iroshizuku Syo-ro which is a dark, green / teal shade. I like bringing these two fountain pens together because I find the Karas Kustoms M nib produces a broader M line than I’m used to, and the Pilot Kakuno F nib produces a finer line than I’m used to. So between these two fountain pens I get a nice variation of line widths and the Kakuno with Syo-ro ink works really well for work purposes.

I brought a couple of coloured pens with me too. I love the versatility of the Zebra Mildliner twin top pens. My favourite is this bright green pen which is great for highlighting and underlining. I also brought a Mervy le Pen in teal because it writes really smoothly, takes up hardly any space in my pencilcase and is good for jotting down and underlining alike. I also thought this colour co-ordinated nicely with my underwater blue Moleskine. That and the Syo-ro ink in my Kakuno and I’ve got a full blown teal obsession.

Finishing up my writing tools I’ve brought a brass pen with a black G2 refill and my Camel HB pencil. I find that the Camel HB is on the hard side of HB so travel-wise it doesn’t wear down too quickly. I also really like ferrule-less pencils because I don’t usually find that ferrules add much visual value to a pencil but you can’t argue with the usefulness of an eraser tip sometimes. I like the simple look of this pencil – the naked barrel, clean white embossed text and even the fact that it’s just called the “Camel HB”.

So that’s my travel carry for Malaysia. I’m looking forward to seeing what I reach for most often (and to getting a selfie with the Petronas Twin Towers).